Co-operation

‘Co-operation’ means, literally, ‘working together’, and it has always been a feature not only of human life, but also of the animal, and to some extent the insect world. Anyone who examines an anthill will notice that the different kinds of ants have different functions and work together to serve the queen-ant, just as bees co-operate to serve the queen-bee. Birds unconsciously co-operate with each other, and, can be taught to co-operate with a man for many purposes. Wolves and jackals hunt in packs, dogs can be trained to control sheep and to act as guards, and to perform tricks on the stage or at the circus. The co-operation of farm animals like horses is essential to primitive agriculture.

But the value of co-operation is most evident in the sphere of human relations, almost every aspect of man’s life being dependent upon it. In any team game, all the players depend on one another, and in a game of football, the forwards cannot score goals, unless their wings and halves feed them passes.

The ‘team spirit’, is valuable in many human activities, and is perhaps most marked in family life, in which every member should be prepared to receive help from and give it to others. Unless parents co-operated with their children, a good upbringing and opportunities for higher education, leading to good jobs would be non-existent.

Unless children co-operated with their parents, many of the latter in their old age would suffer from poverty and neglect. And all members co-operate to preserve the good reputation of their family, by avoiding actions which would bring disgrace upon it.

‘Keep off the grass. ‘Do not throw litter’. Such notices, seen in our parks and public places invite the co-operation of the general public in maintaining the beauty of our cities and the countryside. It is a great pity that they are so often ignored.

Rather more important is the need for the co-operation of motorists, cyclists and pedestrians in keeping injury and death off the roads. There is a clear highway code which, if observed by everybody, would virtually eliminate traffic accidents, but the mounting toll exacted by the roads in nearly every country is ample testimony to the need for much greater co-operation in this sphere of living.

This somber need suggests another crucially important example of co-operation — that which is required between a doctor and his patient. It is quite useless for a sick man to expect a doctor to cure him unless he obeys instructions with regard to treatment and also actively tries to help himself to get better. Doctors can do nothing for patients who refuse to co-operate, any more than teachers can for students who are too lazy to learn or who refuse to do so.

However good the teacher is it is the student who has to pass the examination. However skilled the surgeon, he will fail, if the theater-sister does not hand him the right instrument at the right moment, or if the nurse has failed to sterilize them beforehand.

Co-operation is not only a feature of agricultural methods but also, applies to agricultural; organizations. ‘Co-operatives’ exist where land is held communally, and all resources of machinery and manual labor are pooled. It is a matter of argument whether this is a fairer means than that of private enterprise, or distributing the rewards of labor, but it often makes for efficiency in countries, where vast tracts of lands are given over the production of cereals.

The modern industry would be impossible without a high degree of the most subtle co-operation. The manufacture of a motor car may depend on a thousand separate processes, each of which is essential and which must be timed, even in automated plants, to ensure the smooth delivery of the finished product at the end of the assembly line.

In modern warfare, success depends entirely on co-operation between army, navy, and air force, and also on the co-operation of allied countries; sometimes on that between civilians and the military, as in the ‘underground movement’ of wartime Europe. And in peacetime, all countries request the co-operation of the public with the police forces.

Government and people, capital and labor, parents and children; must co-operate in the hour of need. In the worst sense, co-operation becomes conspiracy; in the best, unselfishness.